


Interim

by Defiler_Wyrm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lucifer's Cage, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defiler_Wyrm/pseuds/Defiler_Wyrm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cage is an abstraction. Hell itself is abstract; it’s human souls that give it form, shape it into barbed chain and stone cells and halls that go on for a thousand years only to loop back around to the beginning. Where the upper levels shaped themselves around the opposite of Mankind’s Heaven – all a soul’s worst fears and memories relived over and over forever – the nadir took its shape in opposition to a different power source. Dark as grace is bright, hot as his core is cold, it was Lucifer alone for whom the Cage was created and for epochs it was for his torment alone that its horrors came to be.</p>
<p>
  <i>An alternate take on Castiel's second trip to the Cage, after the Darkness was released.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interim

The Cage is an abstraction. Hell itself is abstract; it’s human souls that give it form, shape it into barbed chain and stone cells and halls that go on for a thousand years only to loop back around to the beginning. Where the upper levels shaped themselves around the opposite of Mankind’s Heaven – all a soul’s worst fears and memories relived over and over forever – the nadir took its shape in opposition to a different power source. Dark as grace is bright, hot as his core is cold, it was Lucifer alone for whom the Cage was created and for epochs it was for his torment alone that its horrors came to be. **  
**

Sam changed everything. Another angel and two human souls stretched the molten black and made it twist; there was light, not only those blazing little souls and his brother but _sight_ , flashes of flame to match the screams as the Cage made room for Adam and Sam. The Cage gorged on Michael’s wrathful pride and built itself walls to suit the humans’ fear of being trapped. Hell learned from them, and Lucifer, as ever, was at the heart of it all – her first and favourite plaything.

After burning in unflinching darkness for a new eternity now he could see how flesh blistered and peeled, smell their blood and char. Now he could watch the torment of others instead of merely being bombarded with a rudimentary awareness of it. Now he could hallucinate more than sound.

Oh joy of joys.

He wasn’t accustomed to change. Change and Lucifer were, historically, a bad match. Death at least hadn’t deigned to gloat when He came to steal Sam’s soul away. But this…. He felt the tether of his Mark _snap_ , and the source of all the change that ruined him burst forth from a place even deeper than the Cage, the ill-designed anchor at the garden-planet’s heart. The Darkness howled and he felt Its voice tearing through and from his wave-form like a black hole ripping apart a star.

Michael howled too, and Adam Milligan’s soul called out in fear, but neither of them _knew_. Neither understood. No one knew the Darkness like the Lightbringer, and he screamed despair for all of Hell to hear.

And the most unlikely thing happened: someone outside answered.

The impossible seraph, their little fallen brother, swam out of the black with his wings all in tatters, grace weak and the stains of Mankind leaving him profaned. Lucifer quieted, and thrummed out the chords of the angel’s name: “Castiel.”

He felt Michael’s sullen, shaken awareness focus onto him. Whatever was about to happen wouldn’t have much time.

Castiel compressed himself into the guise of his vessel and inclined his head. A frisson warbled in the lesser angel’s being. Last time he came to the Cage he was stronger, less afraid.

“Oh how that little world debases us,” Lucifer crooned to him. He stared out from the bars that human fear had built in his own true form, flaring radiance to hide his own unease. “Are you here to steal Michael’s plaything too? There’s not much left you know.”

“You know why I’m here,” Castiel snapped at him – such cheek when he’s safely on the other side!

But he did know, and coiled up on himself to peer out with as many eyes as he could point through the gaps at once. “Your Righteous Man was the last one to bear the Mark. After everything they’ve ruined, you’re finally desperate enough to come back here, and fool enough to think I’ll help you after what you took from me. Why do you let such a brief, base thing use you for his errand-boy?”

The seraph’s chest puffed and his jaw set. The barb had sunk in. All of Creation knew the way under Castiel’s skin was Dean Winchester, and the little beast wasn’t even his vessel. “Out of all of us I would think you’d understand loyalty. Or at least you pretend to.”

Lucifer refused to flinch but that barb sunk in, too.

“This…situation,” Castiel pressed, “is bigger than our quarrel, or your quarrel with humanity, or your quarrel with God. You were the lock, once.”

That was more than a barb: it was meat hooks that could moor ships, each barbed a thousand times over itself, tearing at his wings and throat as he threw himself at the walls of the Cage.

“Because GOD MADE ME,” Lucifer bellowed, thrashing against slicing chains his rage made real. “HE _KNEW_. OUR FATHER KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN AND HE _MADE ME THIS._ This is Father’s problem – go find the damned coward Himself if you can!”

Castiel stumbled back a step on a nothing plane. “We believe He’s speaking to Sam.”

The world ground to a halt. The Cage stilled and waited for Lucifer to process this. It might have waited a long while. “Why,” he choked out.

“Why does our Father do anything?” the seraph scowled, raising and shaking his shoulders in a parody of settling wings. “To show him the way to form a new lock, if we’re fortunate.”

Lucifer vibrated with laughter. “You know we’re not. He’s ruined this half of me, now He wants to damn the other half too, is that it?”

“Sam sees it as a chance at redemption.”  
  
“And I thought it was a Mark of Father’s trust,” the archangel hissed back. The Cage lurched, and he struggled to find the new level. The walls burned him where they touched. Being able to see it, no, he could have done without that. 

“What did you really come here for, Castiel? Did you hope I would want to help _him_ instead? He betrayed me as much as Father did. …But…it wasn’t to punish me that time. I’ve had a long time to think about that, you know. He was ready to suffer the same as me, or us.” He risked a glance at his elder brother; Michael seethed and shook from the agony of having caught fire again, and stared back. There’d be trouble soon. “A true willing sacrifice. It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that the part of me made purely for that last battle still knows how to love? That lock will take it from him.”

The little seraph stared in silence as Lucifer quieted, trying to remember what that was like – but it was lost somewhere in the lonesome dark a long time ago.

“No. If you came here for the Mark you are, as they say, shit out of luck, Castiel.”

“Lucifer,” Castiel warned – as if he were in a position to issue warnings.

“No,” he snapped. “Part of me is still…it isn’t pure but it isn’t ruined and I won’t help make it ruined to further Father’s sick games. Besides…maybe I just want it to be over.”

“ _Lucifer_ ,” his little brother said again. There was a resonance there that– it didn’t sound right, didn’t come from the right direction.

The Cage lurched again. He howled at the spiked grates that burned as they pierced him, and Michael’s voice roared over it: “Lucifer. SHUT. UP!”

He bristled, but smoothed his reaction into a sneer as he pulled his coils free. “Jealous, brother? No one comes to visit the Good Son down here in the brig, do they.”

“No one’s come to see you either, idiot.” Even with patches of flame marring him, Michael maintained his poise and menace.

All of Lucifer’s eyes blinked in perplexed sequence. “Castiel returned. The Darkness is back, Michael. More will come for us, not just him.”

And Michael _laughed_. “Castiel isn’t here.”

He turned back to peer out through the bars and found only the stormy, endless black of Hell’s true abstract form. When he turned again Michael had risen, wings spread and aquiver, baring the fangs of all his mouths. “Pathetic, Lucifer. I’ve listened to your blasphemous, self-pitying babbling at a damned hallucination long enough.”

Lucifer flinched at his brother’s charge, but steeled himself to match him blow for blow. It would hurt, like everything in the Cage hurt; but his prison would never let either of them die no matter how ready any of them might have been for the end.


End file.
